A thunderstorm brought the State House in Annapolis, Maryland, the oldest state house in the country, into the path of a lightning strike last Friday, the Capital Gazette reports.
Fortunately, lightning rods installed on the structure protected it and safely routed the lightning to ground, preventing any significant damage.
Was on the scene to investigate damage from lightning hitting the State House. Outside sprinkler worked, no fire. Very thankful! #Annapolis
— Larry Hogan (@LarryHogan) July 1, 2016
Benjamin Franklin’s earliest suggestion of using lightning rods came in a letter published in the May 1750 edition of Gentleman’s Magazine:
There is something however in the experiments of points, sending off or drawing on the electrical fire, which has not been fully explained, and which I intend to supply in my text … from what I have observed on experiments, I am of opinion that houses, ships, and even towers and churches may be eventually secured from the strokes of lightning by their means; for if instead of the round balls of wood or metal which are commonly placed on the tops of weathercocks, vanes, or spindles of churches, spires, or masts, there should be a rod of iron eight or ten feet in length, sharpened gradually to a point like a needle, and gilt to prevent rusting, or divided into a number of points, which would be better, the electrical fire would, I think, be drawn out of a cloud silently, before it could come near enough to strike.
Many people believe—incorrectly, as even Franklin suggested in his initial letter—that the lightning rod draws electricity out of the cloud and makes a lightning strike less likely. That’s not exactly how it works.
Rather, lightning jumps around as it goes from the cloud to the ground, and highly conductive material, like that in a lightning rod and the wire that runs from the rod to a conductive grid in the ground, simply provides the current in the lightning strike with a path of least resistance. Lightning follows that path instead of a path that would take it straight into a building and cause damage. The current instead flows into the ground.
“The purpose of the lightning rod is not to attract lightning—it merely provides a safe option for the lightning strike to choose. This may sound a little picky, but it’s not if you consider that the lightning rods only become relevant when a strike occurs or immediately after a strike occurs. Regardless of whether or not a lightning-rod system is present, the strike will still occur.” —John Zavisa on HowStuffWorks.com
